POS & Payment Processing Articles

In the news, the National Retail Federation (NRF)’s retail forecast for 2015 anticipates sale increasing by 4.1 percent over last year. A webinar schedule for Feb. 19 will explain the transmission of secure data in an EMV-enabled payment system, and an article warns of some of the pitfalls to avoid when implementing and EMV system. In other news, Apple filed a patent at the beginning of the month related to “techniques for monitoring device locations within buildings.”

The Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA), the industry association for the point of sale (POS) technology ecosystem, has announced the creation of EMV Central, a new resource page on the RSPA website designed to support the association’s EMV education and awareness campaign.

Retail management consulting firm Boston Retail Partners' (BRP)survey reveals the top IT priority for retailers in 2015 is improving payment security and protecting the confidentiality of sensitive information.

Cisco’s fifth annual retail consumer survey reveals an expectation of “hyper-relevance,” a shopping experience that lets consumers have what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. And your merchant IT clients are feeling pressure to provide the best possible customer experience to stay competitive. Part of the system that enables hyper-relevance is real-time analytics to gain insights and using those insights to build infrastructure to support a plan for tailoring customer experience.

Cisco offers an infographic that shows solutions that will help your retail IT customers stay relevant in the “Internet of Everything” (IoE) era. Sharing data from the white paper “Winning the New Digital Consumer with Hyper-Relevance,” the infographic provides data on consumer’s interest in IoE solutions in three categories of “savings,” “engagement,” and “efficiency.”

In the news, new patent reform legislation has been introduced, there is speculation Samsung could introduce a mobile wallet, and an author shares best practices for dealing with point of sale (POS) system malware attacks.

The recent cyber-attack on healthcare insurance giant Anthem (up to 80 million names, SSNs, birthdays, email address, etc.) has made me realize that, if you’re a VAR or MSP and you’re not pitching security solutions, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

The volume of attacks and media attention is practically doing your marketing for you. The fear of a breach, or resulting lawsuit, is enough to get a conversation started. All you need to do is give your customers a little nudge.